John McLean: Cracked Pot Tries To Burn Better Wellington

Utter Nutter Hattotuwa comes in from the Cold

Sanjana Hattotuwa has been busy spying on Wellington local government affairs. He’s gone so far as to produce his very own hot report on a Wellington incorporated society named “Better Wellington Incorporated”.

Being a fully Trans…parent (person), I hereby disclose that I arranged the incorporation of Better Wellington. I’m even acquainted with some of its evil officers!

Sanjana Hattotuwa

Better Wellington is an up-front outfit whose immediate objective is to see a fresh new group of Wellington City Councilors elected at the upcoming October 2025 local body elections; Councilors who will cut unnecessary Council spending and reduce rates increases. Better Wellington supports the mayoral candidacy of current Councilor Ray Chung. For the sane, these are laudable aims.

But if the content of Hattotuwa’s report is to be believed, Better Wellington is a sinister society of rabid right wingers, secretly supporting Wellington Mayoral candidate Ray Ku Klux Chung and his demonic spawn of Better Wellington “Independent Together” candidates.

Here’s a selection of the majorly mental – poisonous/hallucinogenic mushrooms - morsels that Sanjana’s silly “study” serves up:

The study reveals a systematic political operation that extends far beyond local government advocacy into a comprehensive project of delegitimising progressive politics in Wellington.

Better Wellington constructed a binary narrative positioning Ray Chung as embodying idealised masculine leadership whilst systematically targeting incumbent Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau through sustained misogynistic attacks that weaponised her personal circumstances, employed diminutive gendered language, and celebrated her perceived failures.

The targeting of Whanau intersects significantly with broader attacks on what Better Wellington characterises as "identity politics." Her support for initiatives like te reo Māori signage and cultural programmes is framed as evidence of being "captured by cultural, race and identity politics." This represents a form of racialised misogyny where her identity as a Māori woman makes her a particular target for cultural grievances.

The content employs coded language that appears superficially policy-focused whilst carrying gendered and racialised undertones.

The extensive focus on rates increases and fiscal responsibility, whilst appearing gender-neutral, operates within a broader framework that questions women's competence with finances and management.

This represents the emergence of what might be termed "affective political entrepreneurship", where named, anonymous, and pseudonymous individuals, and organisations build (and simultaneously tear down) political capital by professionalising the production of outrage, resentment, and tribal belonging, creating sustainable business models around the systematic cultivation of political anger rather than the resolution of actual problems. All this, of course, is amplified by Twitter’s own algorithmic outrage amplification, and well-documented gendered harms.

In short, Better Wellington’s terrible tweets, techniques, and tactics – aside from Ray Chung’s vaulting chauvinism - represent a clear, serious, and sustained democratic threat. More specifically, they – and similar platforms, which are burgeoning - present an existential threat to wāhine Māori, and women already in or who want to seek public office.

According to my own cursory investigations of Hattotuwa, insane Sanjana is not, as you read this, gainfully employed by any New Zealand entity. So who if anyone paid him for his crazy report? Perhaps he’s produced his report off his own bat, out of some warped sense of civic duty. Who knows? Who cares!

It’s not even clear who Hattotuwa’s report is for. The report is not addressed to anyone. It’s as if Sanjana is screaming & typing into his own dark and private void. Who in their right mind is listening to him?

In truth however, Hattotuwa’s report is part of a coordinated campaign to smear Better Wellington and its politically independent candidates including Ray Chung.

A few years ago, as a newly minted Wellington City Councilor, Ray Chung sent an email to fellow Councilors Tony Randle, Nicola Young and John Apanowicz. Ray was concerned about an alleged drug-fueled sexual dalliance that a neighbor of Ray claimed Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau had hosted with said neighbor’s son.

Ray’s email – which I haven’t seen – has been leaked to elements in New Zealand’s media who want former Labour Party Minister Andrew Little to be elected as Wellington’s mayor.

Juvenile Journo Joel MacManus has worked himself up into a particularly obscene lather. You can join Joel in his online onanism, right here:

Windbag: Ray Chung has never been fit for office | The Spinoff

For the time poor, here’s my grab bag of Joel’s junk journalism:

The issue here isn’t just that Chung has questionable morals. It’s that he has horrendously poor judgment.

It was inevitable that the wheels would fall off Chung’s campaign once he faced any serious scrutiny.

Chung has a record of controversial public statements – including this comment on Scoop, where he compared a council action plan for food sustainability to the Cambodian genocide: “I’ve worked in Cambodia…and I can see where this idea came from now. We have a council who are driven by ideology as much as Pol Pot”.

Ray Chung is Trump without the tactics. Winston Peters without the wit. Wayne Brown without the brains…He lacks the intellectual and temperamental qualities that we should expect from our elected officials.

For those unacquainted with Sanjana Hattotuwa, I’ve covered him, together with other members of WokeCultearoa, in a previous Substack celebrating the October 2024 death of Disinformation Project:

IS WOKETEAROA A CULT?
John McLean
·
14 October 2024


Almost exactly a year ago – my how time flies! – I poked fun at New Zealand Wokery.
Read full story

The Disinformation Project, funded opaquely out of Jacinda Ardern’s Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, comprised a deranged duo of Hattotuwa and Kate Hannah (“Hate Canner”). Pretending to tackle “misinformation” and “disinformation”, the Disinformation Project generated all manner of nutjob narratives. My favourite Hattotuwa Hogwash was his claim that sentiment against New Zealand’s “trans community” has reached “genocidal” (his chosen word) levels.

Heir Hattotuwa is therefore not a serious or credible person. He’s a crazy product of our crazy times who appears paranoid delusional, or otherwise traumatized. He grew up in Sri Lanka and claims to have covered Sri Lanka’s civil war (which some say involved real genocidal intentions).

The stark irony about Hattotuwa is that he supposedly campaigned against State-controlled media in Sri Lanka, before becoming, in New Zealand, exactly the opposite - an instrument of the Jacindamania Government’s fascistic attempts to control New Zealand’s mainstream media outlets and societal sentiments in general. (In Hattotuwa’s defence, he’s not a true turncoat. It’s just that, now he’s wholly unhinged, the irony of his pivot from supposed freedom fighting populist to authoritarian Wokester is lost on him.)

Woke’s latest invented category of sinister information, on top of “Disinformation” and “Misinformation”, is “Malinformation”. Malinformation, according to Hattotuwa and his ilk, is information that is true and correct but which, in the World According to Woke, causes Woke harm e.g., hurt feelings. Malinformation is basically true stuff that’s not Woke.

Here’s a spot of Malinformation for the Hattotuwas and Joel McManuses of Woketearoa. Ray Chung shows no signs whatsoever of pulling out of the race for the Wellington Mayoralty. He’s a tenacious critter. And there’s a disarming honesty and humor about Chung that might just get him elected. Especially if Wellingtonians wake up to the more-of-the-same fiscal menace that Andrew Little presents, in spades.

LITTLE ON OFFER
John McLean
·
14 Apr


Andrew Little is considering standing to be Mayor of Wellington, in the upcoming October 2025 local body election. Little is a former leader of the Labour Party and Labour Government Minister.
Read full story

If the distinct prospect of a Chung Mayoralty hurts Sanjana’s, Joel’s or anyone else’s Angry Little feelings, then so be it. Sticks and stones, and all that. My wild stab in the dark – and undisguised hope - is that Chung will triumph along with a majority of fellow Councilors who are also pretty normal. Only then will the salvage operation from the second Wahine Disaster be able to begin.

John McLean is a citizen typist and enthusiastic amateur who blogs at John's Substack where this article was sourced.